Collapse of the Eastern Portico Earthquake Open site page in a new tab

de Luca and Lena (2014:139) documented the collapse of the eastern portico in Area F, where excavation revealed numerous architectural elements including voussoirs, worked wall stones, and corbels, together with “a great quantity of fragments of wall plasters with traces of paintings” in various colors, as well as “coins and potsherds from the 3rd–4th century A.D.” On the basis of this assemblage and the nature of the structural failure, they attributed the destruction to the northern Cyril earthquake of 363 CE. In a related discussion, De Luca (2009:352) proposed that “the collapse and relative abandonment of the buildings in sector H” was “a consequence of the earthquake that affected the region in 363 AD,” while at the same time stressing that “the most precise chronological indicators seem to stop around forty years earlier.” De Luca further observed that across the entire excavation of Areas H1, H2, and H3 there were “no finds from the Byzantine period,” emphasizing that there was “not even a single sherd,” a negative evidence pattern that might suggest an abrupt collapse followed by abandonment rather than gradual decline.

By Jefferson Williams